The Fickle Winds of Autumn

38. A Meeting with the Queen

The calm warm stillness of the cave cradled Kira in its dry surround. She sipped a little of the water that Harath had brought her; its cooling fresh contact washed away the thick dryness of her throat, as it tickled a wandering pathway down to the bottom of her stomach.

But her distracted thoughts still spun and lurched; their anxious whirl stabbed and prickled an unsettled malaise through her apprehensive body.

She and her friends were destined to be eaten as food at some sort of ceremony.

Meat for a hatchling chick.

Wasn't there something she could do?

To escape somehow, or wake the others up?

But she had tried everything, and looked everywhere.

Had they avoided the wolves and the slavers, only to be eaten by these bizarre eagle-like things?

The two lumpy shadows of Ellis and Aldwyn lay motionless on the cell floor behind her, barely breathing.

It wasn't fair that she had brought them into this trouble - they had been so kind to her.

Why hadn't she just stayed in the convent?

Why had the Surrounder chosen to punish her in this way?

Was it something she had done?

Perhaps the nuns had been right to complain and admonish her?

"I have never met a female of your kind before," said Harath, "and there is much I would want to learn before the glory of the Observance, yes?"

How could she bring herself to converse with such a creature?

A monster who intended to eat her and her friends?

And yet, the bird-woman seemed pleasant enough - quite friendly even - not strict or distant like the nuns, or spiteful and mean as some of her own classmates had been towards her.

Could it really hurt that much to pass some time talking to her?

Perhaps it would stop her anxious mind from worrying about her fate at the Observance?

And she might even find out some useful information - perhaps even a means of escape?

And besides, wouldn't it just be rude not to say anything?

"An old myth still runs amongst us," Harath continued, "that the humans feed their fledglings with milk - like the cattle who graze the hills. Surely this cannot be true, yes? How could such a thing even be possible?"

The warm blood rose in Kira's cheeks as Harath blinked at her with a deep scrutiny.

Couldn't her jailer have started with an easier, less intrusive question?

"Erm, well... why do you want to know about us - humans, I mean - why is it that you want to learn?"

"I sense that my destiny is bound to that of the humans, yes? As a chick, I was fed on the flesh of a human merchant who was caught on our mountains. Perhaps he had a stronger soul than most, for I feel that his heart still lives on inside of me. I often think that the Observance changed me more than I can understand - the blessed flesh did not just alter my physical form, but it also affected my spirit and even my way of thinking, yes? I sometimes feel more kinship to the humans than I feel towards my own kind - so I have been curious ever since then to learn all I could."

The bird-woman blinked in at her and scratched her talons lazily across the cave floor.

"But the humans who come to our mountains have become less and less - and even if we did catch one, the Gift of Skirnam meant they were unconscious, so I could learn nothing from them - until you arrived, yes?"